At least 47 people were arrested at Yale University on Monday during pro-Palestinian protests, as student-led demonstrations that roiled Columbia University and other campuses last week spread to the center of the school’s community in New Haven, Conn.
Demonstrators set up an encampment at Beinecke Plaza on campus Friday night. The group, Occupy Beinecke, said in a statement on social media that it was calling on the university to disclose its investments in military weapons manufacturers and to divest from those companies.
Protesters had begun daytime demonstrations at the plaza last Monday, dispersing from the space each night after receiving warnings from the school. On Friday, they held a rally outside a board of trustees dinner, then set up the overnight encampment.
Taran Samarth, a protester, said that each day of the occupation had featured teach-ins about subjects including genocide and “poetry in Palestine and in other places facing war and famine.”
Once the encampment was set up, Mr. Samarth said, at night there were “consistent rallies to defend the encampment from threats of disciplinary action by police and by administration.”
The encampment was set up beside Woodbridge Hall, the office of the university president, on a site that has historically been a place of protest on campus. In the 1980s, shanty towns were erected on Beinecke Plaza to protest apartheid in South Africa and call for divestment from companies doing business there.
After the protesters were arrested on Monday, workers cleared the area, carrying off trash bags and wheeling away stacks of folded tents.
Yale said in a statement that it had repeatedly asked protesters to leave and warned them that they could be arrested or face discipline. The university also said it had offered the protesters audiences with leading trustees but had decided by late Sunday that negotiations were at an impasse.
According to the university, the campus police issued 47 summonses on Monday. The arrested students face possible discipline by Yale itself, including suspension, the school said.
“The university made the decision to arrest those individuals who would not leave the plaza with the safety and security of the entire Yale community in mind and to allow access to university facilities by all members of our community,” Yale said in a statement.
The New Haven Police Department said its officers had assisted with the response. The Yale police charged the protesters with first-degree trespass, a misdemeanor, and the demonstrators “were transported to a Yale police facility where they were processed and released,” the New Haven police said.
Hundreds of students and community members also blocked an intersection near Beinecke Plaza, stopping traffic at Grove and College Streets and covering the pavement in chalk messages, including “We will build this world from love” and “Free Palestine.”
The demonstrators chanted: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest” and “Tell the administration that all we want is peace, the more they try to silence us the louder we will be.”
The arrests at Yale came four days after more than 100 students were arrested at Columbia University in New York at a campus encampment set up by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
from U.S. - Latest - Google News https://ift.tt/FKdC2Qx
via IFTTT
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar